My sympathies to those across the north and north-east who endured the dreadful deprivations of having to survive this week without power, water, hot food, facilities and, even more alarmingly, a couple of days without live coverage of the dramaturgical deprivations suffered by the “I’m a Celebrity” cast in deepest darkest windy Wales.
The daily diet being served up to the celebrities – I use the term loosely in some cases – at Gwrych Castle reminds me of a cheap package trip I went on to Majorca many years ago. It was hardly five-star service. In fact, the only star the hotel had was probably for the frenetic castanet-clacking pseudo-Spanish cabaret that ran most evenings, which was long on enthusiasm but painfully short on musicality.
The hotel food was frankly dreadful. The evening buffet usually consisted of something brightly coloured with fish heads floating in it or a mysterious-looking chop that seemed to be exactly the same size and shape as the feral dogs that were omnipresent in the forecourt.
Richard Madeley might have loved it, but I didn’t. I returned almost a stone lighter having lived on bread rolls and cheese for a week.
At Fyne Place we were mercifully spared the freezing horrors of living without power that thousands faced after Storm Arwen. I wonder how those championing a headlong rush to green electricity for cars, homes, technology and leisure felt when such dependence came to a splintering halt the moment the wires came down in a mess of flying greenery.
No car charging, no tech, no heating, no cooking, no shops and no phones since landlines and callboxes are being substituted by smartphones. Generally, there’s no Plan B. It might give folk food for thought in future.
It was an especially worrying time for me here as I could see Mrs F revelling in the prospect that we might have to cuddle-up on the sofa for warmth and spend a TV-free candlelit evening in front of our essential and invaluable wood-burner, which is something else climate zealots would have us ban.
Thankfully, our power stayed on and I dodged that frightening fate, surviving intact to spend next morning chopping firewood in the snow.
There was no shortage of freshly-felled timber about thanks to Arwen’s after-effects. I heartily recommend cutting one’s own firewood because that way it warms you twice.
While I’m in sympathetic mood, my condolences go to all readers called Arwen. It can’t be easy having your name associated with such a terrible event. Look out Dudley, Eunice, Franklin and Gladys, your time is coming next.
I’d hoped that if a Storm Ken arrives it might be more benign in nature but worryingly my name has featured previously for four tropical cyclones in the Pacific Ocean and two in the Southern Hemisphere.
The next UK storm will be called Barra, apparently. Bad luck Castlebay.
Of more pressing concern for the powers-that-be, however, was an ultimately unsuccessful series of high-level crisis meetings likely held to decide on a stormy soubriquet for the weather, equally memorable as the “Beast from the East” moniker from 2018.
I can imagine debates raging into the wee sma’ hours as the country’s brightest brains battled by candlelight to create a name that would live forever in public consciousness. Some previous attempts have been hopelessly hackneyed, such as the Great Flood of 2014, the Great Hurricane of 1987, the Big Freeze of 2010 or Stormageddon, wheeled-out for anything over a few inches of snow throughout the past 20 years or so.
No one seems to have cracked Arwen’s nickname, though. Suggestions such as Power Cutter, Tree Toppler or Transport Terminator don’t really cut it so perhaps we should look to history for inspiration.
Curiously, last Saturday, in 2017, was the day Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement. What a storm that has whipped-up ever since the right-royal blowhards decided to uproot some seemingly solid structures of the Royal Family and leave them teetering dangerously on the verge of collapse.
Painful memories of Arwen’s catastrophic chaos will fade, eventually, but the increasingly cataclysmic impact of Harry’s Havoc or Meghan’s Mayhem, aka the States in the States, will take considerably longer to repair.